Petroleos Mexicanos has obtained a new source of financing by opening a $2 billion credit line with Korea Eximbank, the Mexican state oil monopoly told Efe on Wednesday.
Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya and Korea Eximbank’s chief executive, Yong Hwan Kim, “signed a memorandum of understanding” to open the credit line, a deal aimed at financing a “range of projects” in the company’s pipeline, the Mexico City-based company said in a statement.
“The credit line is designed to provide Pemex and the companies that provide it services with access to financing,” the statement added.
The accord, announced Wednesday, was signed during Lozoya’s visit to the Asian country for the World Energy Congress, which began Sunday and ends Thursday.
The deal will allow Pemex to embark on new projects that increase “production and profitability,” which will be “reflected in better living conditions for Mexicans and job creation,” the company said.
The credit-line deal comes as Mexican legislators are debating an energy-overhaul bill that would allow private domestic and foreign oil companies to enter into profit-sharing joint ventures with Pemex, which was created when the country’s oil industry was nationalized in 1938.
Under the government’s plan, private companies would not be able to register Mexico’s oil and gas reserves on their books, but they would be able to receive the cash equivalent of what they produce.
Currently, private companies operating in Mexico’s oil sector merely act as service providers for Pemex.
The aim of the energy-overhaul plan is to boost production to 3 million barrels per day by 2018 and 3.5 million bpd by 2025 by attracting the private capital needed to develop promising deep-water fields in the Gulf of Mexico and onshore shale deposits.
Pemex achieved its highest level of oil output in 2004 – 3.38 million bpd – but production subsequently fell over the next seven years due to aging fields and a lack of major new discoveries.
The company, which has a monopoly on crude exploration and production and distribution of petroleum products in Mexico, ended 2012 with average daily oil output of 2.55 million barrels and average daily exports of 1.26 million barrels.
